


the same fear

by graspthesanity



Category: Arctic Monkeys, The Kills, The Last Shadow Puppets
Genre: F/M, It's really graphic, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:14:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23665195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graspthesanity/pseuds/graspthesanity
Summary: Self-harm can escalate just like any emotion.
Relationships: Alexa Chung/Alex Turner (Musician), Jamie Hince/Alex Turner, Miles Kane/Alex Turner
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

I had taken off his top hat to run from one bar to another and placed it on my head. I don't know why some stalls didn't do justice while others did. It's strange to think that some places still look away at the lit cigarettes, like the one in his mouth or the other wit a grinning Miles. I only light mine inside, when the balloons trace the ceiling lovingly and I have forgotten the holiday already, the events mumbled up together and the snow outside doesn't make any sense. It takes a while for me to go back inside, once I step out, not noticing the difference between the chandeliers and the winter clouds.

I turn around and I see some girls kissing.

We're at the right place, all right.

I tip my hat to no one in particular and I'm supposed to be a ghost, no metaphor, no nothing. I hadn't bothered much as Jamie insisted on tracing my entire body in chalk-like white paint, probably an excuse for both of us to have sex. I could still feel him inside me. Pounding, pushing my head back, exposing my neck.

I won't ever understand human sexuality, it was like a see-saw my entire life. Girlfriend after girlfriend, now an array of men and even one orgy which I had stumbled on upon. I close my eyes, not thinking of the odd experience where I had met Jamie, who was just as lost as I was-

Neither were one to speak of sexuality openly, particularly the homosexual part of it.

Somehow I consider that the first time we had made love in a private cubicle, but when one stops holding himself together, everything starts to falling apart, like an old sticker album where the stickers are old, out of fashion and some kids had torn it to shreds already, maybe even with my own hands.

I had kept on the act with long sleeves, wondering how the scars would fade to summer. But that wasn't something I should be thinking of. It's not like Jamie hadn't known. He had even caught me on the act, having an ex who had done the same thing. He tried to talk sense into me, but it was something going on in my mind. It was screws going loose.

“Alex!” And I feel as if flashlights and street lights are all pointed at me, as she runs to me in her heels. The last woman I hooked up with, when me and Jamie were still pondering where our place really was and weren't an item.

Alexa.

She looks far skinnier than I recall, but I shouldn't blame her, I look far worse than both of us. What had broken inside me after dating a girl? Was I really one to be homophobic to myself to such an extent? I look at her and I don't want to picture her naked, we all battle our demons and sometimes we don't need to stretch our hands to others.

We had both aged and so had our memories, we wouldn't remember which albums we listened on the 13th of January around now... what, ten years ago? Five? Fifteen? I'm too drunk to count, so I just inhale and my wrists get exposed for a split second, but her eyes are glued to me.

Wasn't she with another girl just now?

Or was she the cheering, lost, third-wheeling friend?

“Alexa.” I say and we kiss each other on the cheeks. I hadn't called her since that hook up and it's too late to even apologize. I looked different and she had hope. Now, it seems that she made peace that the phone will never ring. I'm not even sure what to chat with her about, so I just tip my hat and go inside, feeling her glare at me and then call out for her friend. But the problem is that the party doesn't stop until you pass out in the hands of your lover on the back seat of a taxi, and you ask them to keep quiet about it. Maybe you'll even get a kiss in your corridor. Maybe it's just fear which is the one slashing the wrists all the way up to the elbow of a thirty-nearing man, as if I were a teenager all over again, the same fear, different men.

I don't know why I look back so much, as if Alexa would actually trail behind me, just like an ex-girlfriend once did when I had a secret to hide. She would observe how I kissed another boy and dared to tell everyone, earning the first few slashes on my wrist.

I couldn't ask for help, knowing that it would just be labelled as wrong – even if it was slowly becoming accepted, the people weren't biting it. I didn't know what to do besides inflict anger on myself and here I was many years later with the same scars pulled open almost accurately by different knifes and blades, while tallies were kept on how many days I had been clean.

Sitting in different chairs with different doctors, who would tell me that soon enough they would cure me. But after a few sessions, where I wouldn't explain Jamie who'd be sitting on the other side of the door, nearly eavesdropping, which caused us to fight later... I couldn't accept myself.

I knew what it would do to me. There was so much hatred built inside me, because I knew what would happen, how the holidays would slip through my fingers and my decaying parents wouldn't even want me at their funeral, their only son, just because he was confused and I had made peace that if I ever got the courage to commit suicide the church wouldn't accept me, that was fine. It had led a strong light to shadow everyone's ignorance. So let it be, I thought.

Until I found myself trying to find God by a therapist once and then rejected by another. Everyone had different methods, some worked better than others, some worse, some would cause me to scream and cry over split blood on the desks and bathroom tiles while others would just make me whip out a knife on the taxi back and I would silently slash it.

I felt that Jamie got glossy eyed over it all. He would make the pain more bearable, but love was never enough. There was something within me, there was some poison dissolving and contaminating my essence and soul. It was fear that I somehow

Somehow

Wasn't good enough.

Jamie linked hands with me in the gay bar, offering me a drink and a quick glance at my wrists, since those were the easy targets. I was surprised that I hadn't been hospitalized by force, something I grew up with – the fear that I would be driven away and I would stay behind, not really feeling the straps of the bed and fuck knows what, the pills which would numb me. All I wanted was to be alone.

I wanted my thoughts to be mine and mine alone. But instead I felt like everyone was watching me, as if I were on a stage and everyone was listening to every sexual act that I had done. People still deemed homosexuality a disease, being gay being wrong and tried their best to suppress their urge as well. Were we animals?

Soon I would reach some age. But tonight it didn't matter, it felt like I wanted to immortalize myself and sometimes I wanted to just slash it all up so that all could be bled out and I would be gone, no thoughts, no body to look after.

I wanted to count all the times when I'd be left bleeding, but as soon as the blood would trickle, show up on the surface, I would tend to it, wondering what the fuck was wrong with me. Until then I would go to bars, get distracted and have sex. Sometimes life seemed to be from cut to cut.

But it was surely not love that could cure it. It could aid it, sure. Sometimes even screams wouldn't reach me, as if I were underwater. I could feel my head become an aquarium. I couldn't understand the news, I couldn't even understand movies sometimes, so news were out of the question. I was alone. I would watch people who weren't trans laugh at badly worded jokes and people snarl in disgust at gay people. I couldn't understand anything.

Sometimes I'd even turn on the news to see the same kind of people being shot to death.

I wish I could just let myself loose at them, but I couldn't. My fear spoke in infinite numbers, infinite slashes and Jamie holding the blade from me, but I could go to any paper shop and buy a new knife. We both needed to work, but I couldn't even try anymore. The thoughts scared me and I would scream into a pillow for a while, until I decided on a plain clerk job, wondering if Fight Club and the badly explained split personality were the only things missing.

Miles was in the cubicle next to me and I wondered when we would be replaced. He called me over, for what I even thought was a date, so Jamie tagged along. They both came together and I just vomited in the bathroom, scared and trembling from the food, from the encounter. But me and Jamie did enough snooping around to see that Miles was indeed gay. Jamie came to check up on me and splashed me with water. I wished that he would just dunk me somewhere to drown. But how can one even drown further?

I trembled, my whole body was shaking and I had to be taken home.

We excused ourselves and Jamie sat quietly, wondering what other doctors would work. It felt as if I had tried them all.

And winter had come.

With Miles' second invitation and more regrets, I was integrating into society, but my scars were still there and more medication was added, more advice was given, but none worked and I wondered when the day would come when I wouldn't hold.

I couldn't run away from my fears, I couldn't run away from myself because I would reach a mirror which would show my shadow, my fears and my badly lit face with the razor burns. I turned off the light in my bathroom cubicle once I reached it after the dance floor, without saying a word, and stared at the blade, before sliding it back into my pocket. I had nothing to disinfect wounds with here and instead I cried, knowing that if I stayed longer I would miss some fun which I would forget the next goddamn day. I cried and cried, until Jamie knocked and cleaned me up.

We slow-danced on the dance floor, but I couldn't speak up. I didn't want to leave, I wanted to wear my top hat and see how the night would unfold, even if I just idly talked to my boyfriend and my co-worker, just to tick a box called fun, which I would never be able to get enough of or even a proper grasp.

Maybe I shouldn't have held in the bathroom. I didn't know.

I noticed Miles watching me and then quickly glancing to make sure Jamie was drinking when he would land a longer stare at me and I knew that he knew of my cuts, it was hard not to notice them, but no one really spoke of them, as if I had wings and someone had ripped them out, leaving me-

I was nostalgic for things I never did, things I never missed before, but I would check old albums, as if trying to find teenage years I had missed, early twenties and even years before I was born. I couldn't stick to the present. I didn't want to.

I just wanted to be found. But I didn't even know what to wager in, how to turn on the flashlight or send Morse code. I knew nothing and nothing ached. I kept on drinking until I couldn't. Happy New Year.


	2. Chapter 2

I opened my eyes and there it was. A new year and many missed messages congratulating on new beginnings as if I were a child or pregnant, a new beginning... To whom? Jamie snored besides me softly and I tugged on a robe from the floor and made my way to the bathroom just to trace the dark circles with my fingers a few times, knowing that everything would come back to me. I looked behind me, as if expecting an evil rabbit. I liked Donnie Darko, maybe that would be the way I would die. I closed my eyes and I could feel the balloons slowly fall with glitter from the ceiling last night as me and Jamie kissed. It was an uneventful start of a year as I passed through the holidays with Jamie and snow. I made a total of thirteen cuts, not sure why, but I would tend them and stretch out my neck, keeping my promise to tell Jamie after every single time and sometimes he would be the one tending, telling me things I would forget.

I would look at him through semi-closed eyes, as if death were really here to take me away. I couldn't speak of the pain inside me because it never trickled out, it stayed still, clung to the bones, no matter how deep I slashed and how I'd damage muscles and flesh. I could reach guilt and fear, but hatred... pain... was deeper.

I did three copies of what I was supposed to do that first day at work, wondering on what day of the week I would close my eyes for good and I traced the calendar above the printer and Miles, who had joined the office by my own recommendation, and the fact that Jamie could keep an eye on me through someone else was good enough for him. He told me what I had done and I just took the copies and went back to the desk.

I leaned my head back, tiptoeing and spinning clockwise on the chair, hearing someone spill their paper clips with a quiet 'fuck'. It's all too white. Maybe I should grow my hair again, I always did when things were tough, I was cutting frequently and I told that to today's psychologist along with the fact that I would leave them by the end if nothing would change.

Their glossy eyes resembled a fish in a market, cut open for me to judge the insides and I left. I took the bus home, watching the city ride by and I closed my eyes, pushing the sleeves of my jacket up only for them to fall down. That was that. I smiled at nothing and frowned at the barking dog when I walked up the staircase at our house, before I reached the apartment.

I complained to Jamie about the dog over carbonara pasta which I had made, and dreamt of it being dead during the night. Tracing circles over my eyes before I woke up for the next day. I was truly the gay agenda.

It felt like I was spinning slowly out of my memories and out of control, eyes closed, but I still did my work, wondering how had Jamie's day gone. I texted him a few times to receive replies within my expectations. He knew that I was a hazard to myself and frankly if it were up to him, I would be put on suicide watch at all times, but instead the glossy eyes would tell me that I was better than the previous year and the one before that and that they've seen me much worse.

Sometimes I wouldn't hold and as if to prove a point I would cut deeper, wishing the blood would clog up the sink as I would watch my reflection in the mirror, blood going down before Jamie would find me and sit me on the edge of the bathtub, tending to my wounds. I would see a parallel way where I would be the one looking after that, feeling the pain and stopping, but today I was numb until he put the bandages on, wondering out loud if I needed stitches this time and he hugged me.

“Am I getting better?” I asked quietly, not addressing it to him, but to myself, but it was Jamie who answered it.

“You are.” He says.

“Isn't that a thing to say for me to feel better?” He hugged me tighter, digging his head between my shoulder and neck. I could feel tears against my neck, sometimes he would cry, wishing that I could share my pain with him, that I could somehow give him everything to handle, but it wasn't that easy.

Then the weekend rolled in and it was a torture when it fell on Sunday, because that was the melancholic day when I would even scream at pillows, pick fights and then just start crying. I didn't want it to end, even if the days were like a long, stretched white corridor with closed doors leading to other people's lives. Before I would be interested in knowing people, what was inside them. I remember I had talked once with a man, saying how I always waited until people would open up to me and I would know all their secrets and what had they held. That it was like eating a fruit and reaching the sweet bit. But now I lost that touch, my hands had fallen and my own depression left the skeleton of me outside in this corridor to wander, as I would keep walking, passing every door, not opening, not peeking in-

The doorbell rang.

I raised my head from the pillow, Jamie quickly standing up and walking to open the door. I heard Miles' voice, but it was too muffled and I curled under the covers for a bit, before emerging, clothed and teeth brushed, hair a bit messy, which caused Jamie to jerk in surprise, but he smiled at me and I looked at Miles.

“Everything alright?” I asked, my bandages seen from under the long sleeve I was wearing, maybe they needed changing as I saw Miles' dark eyes travel down my hand until it reached the exposed part, but I'm sure Jamie had told him that with a cigarette in between lips, maybe drunk, maybe wine in hand and maybe they had discussed it, maybe it was just Jamie's monologue on how the health system was failing us, letting his lover die slowly... As if it was cancer.

“Yeah, Al, I was just around the neighbourhood and decided to pop in... I hope I'm not interrupting anything.” Miles says hastily and looks at Jamie, who shakes his head, crossing his legs, offering us both coffee, looking mostly at me. I nodded and Miles thanked him. We sat in the living room silently and I wished we had a pet, but instead I tugged on the sleeve of my shirt, trying to cover up the bandage, recalling how I would sometimes change hands as a teenager, pulling the shirt sleeves up with my teeth, eyes filled with tears of not understanding why depression hurt so bad in my head.

Jamie brought us coffee and we sat silently, as if we had never known each other. Miles looked worried and then glanced at Jamie before focusing his gaze on me.

“Have you ever thought of volunteering?” Jamie put his cup down louder than usual, trying to say something stingy to Miles' question towards me, the visitor looking at my bandages.

“No.” I say simply, looking at my mug and Jamie deciding to give me the space.

“They say that sometimes... it's easier. Because you can't give yourself advice... so you have to imagine what would you tell a friend or a close relative who were in the same situation.” I gripped the cup.

“I had that when I tried CBT. What would I suggest... when I don't know how to help myself?” I said quietly and Jamie I guess glared at Miles, who just shrugged and watched them communicate silently.

“Right... Right.” Miles said and looked out the window, as if it would snow, but it never would. He closed his eyes, Jamie's green eyes still piercingly glaring at him. My soul started to ache, as if I were in a therapy session. I drank my coffee, stood up without saying a word and took a box of cigarettes right next to the balcony and opened the door, letting the cold air in. I looked at the floor as I closed the door behind me, allowing my boyfriend to chew out my friend and co-worker. I looked down. It wasn't enough for suicide, Jamie had made sure of that, and I just watched the wind tussle people's clothing and hair as I felt it as well. I closed my eyes, feeling all the fabric around me, all the different textures hiding me from the cold. I could hear them arguing if I tried hard enough.

Miles insisted on trying more doctors before they would find me dead, but Jamie just yelled back at him that I was already dead. That all the suicide attempts were behind in my teenage years, which took Miles by surprise, that there was no point in trying further than we already were. Once I had even had gone to some old Russian lady, who looked at me and Jamie suspiciously, dealt our cards and spoke to Jamie that I was fragile, that all was in his hands and then did a session in private for both.

She told me to keep going to her, that she would heal the wounds in my soul... Because my boyfriend cared, but the next time I came around her grandson told me she had died. I stood there outside on the outskirts of town, smoking, not even having told Jamie and looked at the sky. Trying to recall every word she had told me and wondering.

She had given me a Russian cross, even if I wasn't baptised, and I had worn it that day, feeling its weight. Wondering what would it even do. Eventually I took it off, as I came home and hid it in my wallet, wondering if she had given Jamie the same thing. I reached into my jeans pocket, taking out the wallet and the small cross with Jesus, flipping it over with the Cyrillic letters and I traced them, before tucking it back in.

I looked behind me. They had left into the kitchen, I guessed, so I stayed out longer in the balcony, eyes closed and took out the cross one more time, playing with it between my fingers, but it wasn't my religion to wear, so I put it back into its hiding place.

I wondered if she went to Heaven... Fortune telling was against her religion, she had told me, but still did it while believing in God. We break so many rules and we decide which ones are sin and which ones aren't for others as well. We are very selfish. Because we die alone, so we decide how to do it over the course of time, through dreams, through deals with the Devil and through lost loves and navigated dreams, unconquered fears.

I told everything to Jamie, as he sat besides me, outside the bathtub, stroking my growing curly hair and listening quietly. He had kissed me.

I opened my eyes, feeling myself shiver and I went back inside.


	3. Chapter 3

Lust.

I feel like it started lacking the sparkle in my life, as if love had turned into something which just evaporated from my goosebumps yet was still en masse produced by my cells. I could feel run through my body, when my eyes were closed and I could see Jamie. I lusted after him. I loved him. We had both loved each other and we had confessed so long ago, that the memory was a faded photograph of the same bathtub I took baths in, both of us squeezed in, facing each other, before Jamie turned me around and spooned me, whispering his long confession into my ear, his fingers tracing the skin which would get new scars and where the old ones had faded into a lighter shade. I leaned my head back, now running a bath, right after Miles had left.

I dunked my head, recalling the time I had a razor with me in the bathtub and the water had been tinted from my wounds, a sight I'd see way too much or whenever Jamie would tend me. Baths seemed to soothe me and for a long few years I lived without a bathtub, barely standing in the shower and letting the water trail on my back for a bit, until it felt enough.

Jamie sat next to me, lighting a cigarette and watching me. I looked back at him, one eye open and he gave me a brief kiss filled with nicotine and smoke, as I tried to smile, but neither of us could. Jamie didn't stare at my scars, but I knew that when I wasn't looking he would check if there were new ones and how they were healing. If I had wings I would cut them off. Sometimes I had the urge to break things, just to see what would happen, feel myself in control, because I felt like I was on a small children's ride, which wasn't even promised to be a rollercoaster and I could fake spider legs on my face.

He stroked my face with his left hand, cigarette in the other and I motioned for him to share as he looked at my body, dunking his hand to trace my shoulders with his free hand, soaking the sweater he had been wearing, but we both said nothing.

Eventually he took off the clothes and joined me. I lifted my head up to face him and we kissed again, this time tongues intertwining and a soft moan escaping his lips as I pressed my body against his, as possible as it was in a bathtub. He started softly biting and licking my neck, my eyes now closed and my cock hardening as I glanced below to see that his thinking had made him hard. We kept breaking kisses as if they were plates, kissing all over each other's body, getting so hard that we had to step out of the bathroom and with a quick dry onto the bed. We grabbed each other's cocks, knowing every stroke, every curve to trace and how every gasp sounded, but it still excited each of us, even if to think of it... We repeated many things and slowly dipped into new ideas, but sex remained the same, the same love, the same combinations of words, going underwater before cumming all over Jamie's and my stomach as I would ride him, his green eyes closed, lips bitten and ejaculating inside me.

I was about to let him slip out, but he held me, locked lips, took my cock in his hands, tracing the cum onto the tip, the tip of his tongue playing with mine, as I tried to catch my breath.

“You're so fucking sexy.” And he picked up the pace again, cum leaking out, exciting both of us, as he kept going.

My cock shivered before going hard again and I came way before he did, exposing my neck, as he held me down by my shoulders, thrusting deep inside me, my gasping mirroring every rope of cum coming out of my cock, I only opened my eyes when he finished inside me again, tracing his shaking fingers on my sides and down on my hips, allowing me to fall on him, as he slowly softened and slipped out with all the cum he had used as lube.

Both our breathing heavy and synchronised, until it went different ways as Jamie fell asleep first and I took a while, watching him with tired eyes, feeling the skin get sticky and I remembered that art piece with the clocks which had wonky batteries and went out of synch. It was a reference to the artists' boyfriend or partner dying of AIDS, but I wondered if it applied to couples which would depart for other ways. One would take the clock with them, leaving the other hanging or maybe both would leave, the wall empty for another couple to showcase their love. I sat on the edge of the bed, running my hands through my growing hair, it was nearly up to my chin now and I had already started using Jamie's anti-aging creams. I mocked him when he tried botox a few years, when we weren't dating.

I closed my eyes.

He had been dating someone else, still in some odd balance with his sexuality and he was supposed to marry her. He promised Alison he would and yet he still slept with men, her not knowing that actually his attraction was more geared towards guys. We were friends for quite a while. I knew Alison, but once she figured it out, she got cold and couldn't utter a word in my presence, knowing that her fiancé was cheating on her and me being a man was somehow a heavier blow. I took Jamie's discarded clothes from the bathroom and hugged them for a while, smelling his scent, before placing them on an armchair in the bedroom and I went into the living room. I wanted to turn on the telly, but I knew that he'd wake up. I took out my phone and browsed some photos on Instagram, finding nothing in particular until I stumbled on Alison and Alexa in the same photo. It's strange how we had the same past.

Why should've we gone past women to understand who we really were?

I remember I went to a LGBT circle once and then I started talking of coming out... Jamie was there with me, he didn't talk about his, even to this day there were things he hadn't told me and I kept talking and talking around men much older than me, younger girls who looked at me with square eyes and I started shaking.

“A man should be the one fertilizing women... He should be a husband... Not someone who takes away a good husband from a woman.” And then a slap had followed when Alison told me those words when we were alone. All her anger was summarized into that. She wanted a child from Jamie and there I was, taking him with me and instead of telling him upfront... She waited for me to go outside for a smoke and told me that, slapped me and went back in to finish her separation in a more civil manner with tears and pleading when it came to Jamie. I remember falling to my knees, the cigarette sliding out of my mouth. I had to light a new one and I sat outside until Jamie had left to check up on me then take us home. Alison was alone in the restaurant. He never returned her calls.

I looked at her newly dyed blonde hair. How long has it been since I had seen her?

I tried to zoom in on her face, forgetting how the app works and then I pressed my phone against my mouth, locked, and unlocked to scroll further. Wondering if I could unfollow said friend. I did, forgetting who was it after a few minutes. They would write to me, if worst comes.

How many times have me and Jamie had sex?

I closed my eyes.

It's been a while. Sure, we had more sex when we became a couple, before we settled into our routine, but my mind was foggy, there were days when we would have sex even twice and there were weeks when work was clogging up our feelings.

He would've knocked up Alison many times by now and so would I have with Alexa. If there were no troubles of course. I sighed very deeply, heading towards the kitchen, opening the tap and running water to get some to drink. I was restless, Alison's words still shaking me. I took out my phone and searched her account through a browser, since we had mutually blocked each other and she had become an aunt, a pretty desperate one to say. Her niece was everywhere and I kept drinking water. I wondered what was wrong with her adopting a kid. I wondered for a brief while why was it so frowned upon.

I knew that Jamie, still fresh from Alison's desire, said he didn't want any, so we didn't speak much of the topic. I looked at my wrists. I could barely handle myself, let alone a child. But I closed my eyes, wondering... if one day... I would like to be a dad.

I didn't know.

But I looked at the bedroom. How much semen had been spilled to Alison's shitty dismay made me wonder... Why was she so crazy? What was the fuss about children? Sure, I wanted to be a dad under the right moment but I needed to respect Jamie's wishes because I wouldn't fucking knock myself up and then present him with the fact. I was cis, so there was no way for both of us.

I was naked and covered in sticky cum, as I looked down, realizing that I hadn't trimmed my body hair in a while, while Jamie would go extra lengths to laser it all specifically for summer, which made my eyes roll, muttering that he was like those Grindr twinks. He'd shrug, maybe shove me a bit and we would change topic. I leaned my head back, thinking of how nice it actually was to lick him all without hair everywhere. He would always be horny for the next week and I would suck him off a lot and trace the cum everywhere, dipping a finger in his mouth for him to taste himself as I would position myself to fuck him.

I opened the tap and splashed myself with water.

Great.

I didn't want to jerk off now or wake up Jamie, neither of us enjoyed sleepy sex.

But I remember he would call me drunk, when Alison would be away and I would wake up... I would walk to his house and we would fuck, mouths barely leaving the other, we still used condoms and I would carry a few with me at all times for Alexa and Jamie. There was something magnetic between us. Maybe it was the thrill of holding a secret, maybe it was the thrill of tasting our real selves. I don't know. We didn't talk about it in the morning, even if we had a collective brunch with the girlfriends.

There was an exception, when I excused myself to the bathroom and he went after me. He had a rather heavy hangover and he kissed me then, right after entering, holding my wrist and it was in the morning light, with someone else using a fucking urinal. It was as if he was still drunk, but I could see his dark green eyes clearly and they were different. I remember I had frozen in the spot, as his hand was on my neck. We made out again, pressed against the stall and broke away once someone else walked in and excused to use the stall, as we stood. I was staring at the floor and Jamie looked at the door of the entrance.

My mind is foggy.

I cough from the cold and I see Jamie in the door frame as he rubs his eyes, his own penis flaccid and sticky from cum. He approaches me and kisses me, sleepily. Not saying anything and I just trace his cheek with my fingers. I feel his stubble.

I open my mouth and Jamie nods for me to speak up.

“I was scared... back when Alison and Alexa didn't know... When we rented a hotel for the first time, the morning after you had a stubble and I felt as if I was playing with the thorns of a rose.” He kissed me sleepily and we held the kiss.

“You had cut off all the thorns off, though.” Jamie shrugged, his eyes heavily sleepy and he yawned, covering his mouth and putting his head on my shoulder, as my hair was nearly closing his eyes, like a curtain.

“The flower never withered.”

“You had replanted the flower in your own pot. Taken me... from somewhere I wasn't supposed to be.”

We started seeing each other in hotels, making up dumb excuses, the next one dumber than the previous and one of those encounters had Jamie holding me by the chin.

“Are you tested?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Same.” And he entered me without a condom, causing me to blush from the sensation and moan, closing my face with my hand, as Jamie removed it, sliding his tongue into my mouth, legs around his waist. He cummed inside me. I screamed and followed, grabbing the bedsheets, too bewildered to grab Jamie, as he kept pumping my cock until the sweet sweet release and his touch.

That was the first time we made love without saying it to one another, only to acknowledge it when things started getting out of hand. When I would walk to his work and fuck him in a work stall or he would do the same. When we couldn't hold and would sneak kisses in alleyways and would watch movies together.

The condoms were now left for Alexa and I remember one time before we were supposed to make love, I headed for my condom, she was still on the bed and I closed the wallet. She looked at me puzzled and I just leaned down for my pack of cigarettes which was on the floor, looked at her and headed outside for a smoke, knowing that I wouldn't get turned on-

We screamed and screamed at each other.

Alexa found out months later after we broke up. I didn't want her to know of my sexuality.

I thought I was bi, but staring at that condom... It was as if it was taunting me, reminding me of grinding against an older lover, Jamie's kisses and us fucking until we would cum and not even thinking about using a condom for months now. I was gay.

I broke up with her for no reason, she ended up crying and crying. Sending me voice messages I would listen to with a cigarette until I got bored and started erasing them without checking with a cigarette in my mouth, Jamie watching, waiting for his time to unfold. He didn't want it like that with Alison. He told her and then she slapped me.

A shiver runs through my spine and I have to grab Jamie, as he nearly falls asleep while standing.

I take him to the bed and sit up, once he's asleep... Wondering when will my hair grow back. I look at my wrists and all the way to my elbow. Sometimes I don't make sense to myself. Eventually I tuck myself in and my last thought of the day is Alison's slap and photos of her niece. Fucking crazy bitch.


	4. Chapter 4

I walk out of a stall, I hate using urinals. Miles is washing his hands, his dark eyes meeting my own. My hair is nearly the length I want it to be and curls up, nearly reaching my neck. He looks around, he had dyed his hair blonde, which caused me and Jamie to joke drunkly that he had some inner gay crisis going on. But soon enough we shut up, as he glared at us at the pub. I had started cutting less, but I knew that it was a demon that would either follow me or catch up with me soon.

“Why do you cheat?” I stop in my footsteps, the blood draining from my face.

“Or rather...” He rephrases his question. “Why did you cheat... You and Jamie... You both cheated on your girlfriends.”

My body starts getting cold and shaking. I hear a distant hum.

“Couldn't you just admit that you're gay to them?” His voice sounds like venom. Miles pauses and then looks at me, blonde hair in his eyes. “I met Alison yesterday... She had no idea until Jamie told her... I'm suspecting the same was for your girlfriend, Alexa. You never told me this.”

I didn't know what to say, so I just kept quiet, tracing my wrist with my fingers which caused Miles to notice, so he seemed to step back mentally.

“Alex... She was your girlfriend.”

Make children.

Steal husbands.

I thought of our very first encounter when we had fucked in a stall, me and Jamie and I called it love because once you fall in love... You feel like you've always loved and every other feeling was an illusion, a distorted or broken mirror you shouldn't even look into, because you'll get jinxed or get bad luck.

I look at Miles, my nail digging into the most recent wound and digging deep, opening it, and I just walked past him as he tried to take hold of me, to apologize, to explain, but instead I went back to my cubicle, got a bandaid and texted Jamie that I needed help again. I held my tears, recalling Alison's Instagram and her niece.

I couldn't focus for the rest of the day and when I got home I only relaxed in Jamie's lap after drinking a bottle of wine and muttering things I wouldn't recall the next day about Miles. He tended my newly opened wound, despite being drunk and I woke up on the sofa, I guess we had slept on it to a very quiet Jamie. I turned around and we ate quietly in the end.

“Cheating...” He said the word as if he hadn't used it in a decade. “It was... different. We wouldn't accept ourselves. In the beginning of the year, you still struggled and you still don't tell everyone.”

I felt myself grow defensive. I wasn't fond of the office guessing who topped who and who was the “woman” in our relationship.

“Or maybe I'm just a bad person.” He shrugged and drank his tea, signalling for both of us to get dressed for work. I missed work that day and the next. Calling my therapist to book an appointment for the evening. Settled on the day after tomorrow. I kept declining Miles' calls and messages, deleting voice messages not to clog up my phone's memory with junk from a guy who seemed to have it light... for now. I didn't care. I did three cuts in the morning on the way to the therapist and rode alone, as Jamie had a work meeting.

When I returned to work Miles took some personal days off and I returned his calls, just to receive the same treatment that I had given him.

I called for a few days and I gave up on the weekend, until I had seen him buying cigarettes next to a pub which me and Jamie frequently visited. Jamie signalled he'd go inside and I stood outside, watching Miles' new dark roots contrast his blonde hair and neither of us knew what to say. It wasn't even that it was that big of a fight, it was because we hadn't talked in a while. Miles stood with his arms crossed and soon enough I lit a cigarette. Watching the flames barely form from my old lighter, Miles took out his and then took the cigarette for himself. I watched him.

He gave out a small chuckle at my confused expression and gently gave me my cigarette back.

“I would've done the same thing, Al.” He said and took my cigarette again after I inhaled it and I kept my eyes on the cigarette. My hair now the ideal length. Maybe even needed a trim now for the split ends.

The music on my head stops.

I hear nothing as his lips move and I make out his words.

“I would've done the same thing, if I knew I had a shot with you.” He smiles, before frowning at the sudden choice of words and confession. He tilts his head and watches my confusion. “But I can't dare to break a love... Even if I can see cracks... Because he really fucking loves you.”

He leans in and his smoke is in my face as I grab the cigarette.

“You're the one who is lost.” I can't even inhale, the cigarette is in my fingers trembling and Miles looks into my eyes, then at the cigarette. Back at me and looks at the entrance of the pub. “We'd better get going, Al.”

He starts to go towards the pub and I'm left next to the news-stand with all the football news and the nearly gone cigarette. I look at the curious man, who had been eavesdropping, but he avoids my gaze. I buy some gum hoping that I'd see his eyes, but he keeps them down, thanking me for the purchase and I head into the pub.

It starts raining heavily, making me forget the sense of time the next morning. I kept looking at Miles, because I never know what to do with a love confession. Jamie and I were watching some comedy movie and I wanted to tell him, but he kept laughing, arm around me, as if he felt that I could slide through the cracks between his fingers now, so when I wanted to say something, he turned to face me, still cracking a laugh and I just quickly smiled, my mind elsewhere. It wasn't uncommon for me to not laugh during a comedy, but crack some smiles or small laughter. I remember that there was a period of time when I wasn't laughing at all and it took some really dumb joke to get me laughing for ages, with Jamie looking at me relieved.

“You're emotionless.” And my hand shook, nearly dropping the cellphone, was the last time I talked to my mother. Not talking about children, who had gotten wed, who had gotten pregnant and who had died. I could barely recall who was who and only some bad memories lurked around. But the problem is that society is obsessed with blood ties, the same blood spill when I can't take it anymore. Maybe it's because if I could I would get rid of it all. Sometimes the pain went to the core and I would open new scars, old ones, letting the sink get stained and I would watch wide eyed, shaking, scared of the blood that was leaking, but feeling that I wanted it out.

I didn't want my family.

“You're always thinking about the past... You should stay in the present, Alexander.” Her voice still rang in my head, my hand all bandaged by Jamie, who discovered me on the tiles of the bathroom, sitting, my arm stretched into the sink, my eyes wide and dry with no tears, body shaking and blood just leaking, tracing patterns.

“I want it all out.” I had told him with dried up lips and my face pale as a ghost. “I don't want this blood.”

I had nearly spat the last part out, my heart aching, pulsing, showing me that I'm alive. He took me to the hospital fast and they stitched me, called my doctor and I was given a higher dose of antidepressants. I was let go and told to stay home with outdoor walking or whatever the fuck they were on. I remember the next few days Jamie would grab the knives from my hands. Even at night, he would hear me stand up, get a razor or a knife and he would always stop me by grabbing it and that's when I would cry...

“I can feel! I can fucking feel!” I would scream and he would hold me dear. “I'm not emotionless!”

“I'M NOT FUCKING EMOTIONLESS!”

I tore the bandages with my hands and tried to dig into the stitches when the phone rang, 5 am, far too early for it to be good news and Jamie picked up as I followed him into the bedroom, where my phone was. He held his mouth with his hand, expression wiped out entirely and looking at the floor. He tried to speak, but it came out as a croak. I couldn't get myself to grab the phone. I was stitched well, so I couldn't bleed anymore. The blood was there to stay.

“Your mother died.”

He fell on his knees and started gasping for air, shoulders shaking and tears falling rapidly for the both of us. He barely knew her. She knew Jamie as my friend. But it was as if I was watching the reaction I was meant to have. Instead I slid down the wall and I wanted to bite my stitches off with my bare teeth, but watching Jamie break down... He had been trying to get me and my mother to talk, he would see her often and she would find out the grim news of my newest medication through him, through agreed on terms with me, because we had fallen out. She probably knew that he was my boyfriend, but she never said anything to him, just held her umbrella tight when they would meet. Sometimes they would drink coffee together, Jamie feeling awkward, as if feeling that she thought he had given me the gay.

“Alex... He...” Then she had looked at Jamie with a piercing yet soft stare, as if something had clicked in her head. It had intimidated Jamie so he looked away on their last meeting. She never finished her phrase, they departed and now that was it. Coffee had been drunk, the cups had been washed long ago.

We sat on the same table the next day of her passing. I sat in my mom's chair and I ordered coffee, even if she would drink de-caf. I wasn't going to the funeral. I would pass later. I wanted to see no one, but I had stared at the invitation to her funeral. Surprised that my father, who had divorced her, made all the arrangements. As if they had forgiven each other. Or maybe they secretly were back in their lives, I hadn't known. Maybe they had asked themselves what had happened to their son.

“He has a girlfriend.” Jamie lied once, to cover me up and I remember I felt revolted, even if we decided it was time to say something. I don't remember if she bought it or not. It was a while and Jamie just stared outside of the window from the couch. Then he took a chair from the dining table and placed it in the balcony, wrapping his arms around himself and looking above, as if there was God and then bellow on the people walking on the pavement, he sat there for quite a few hours and then took a hot bath and it was me, watching him, have all the reactions I should've had. It was as if he had taken all my pain and was suffocating from it, when he would dunk his head underwater and hold his breath until he wouldn't anymore and I couldn't even pull him out, my bandages tight and my arm weak from all the damage I had done to it.

Then Jamie looked at me, his eyes bloodhsot from the water.

“She's dead.”

It's been days.

I couldn't sleep, a mixed episode taking over my life and I stopped replying to calls. I had met up with my dad and we walked to her grave, he kept looking at my arm, the bandages seen from under the sleeve of the coat, so he wanted to ask. I could see it on his lips.

I didn't cry when I saw her name on the gravestone with a photo of her smiling, but I went down on my knees, leaning my head down, closing my eyes and giving a silent prayer to her, not even sure if I was sincere, but I did it anyway, on autopilot. I hadn't seen her in a while, same for dad, and Jamie was the one who talked to her. It made more sense for him to come to the funeral, which he did, instead of me... He touched her leg, a tradition to keep the dead from haunting your dreams, to fully say goodbye. But I guess I let her haunt my dreams. I should've drank coffee with her from while to while, but I didn't and now I couldn't break the glass of time, I could skip the tracks of months, one after another, but I would never find her again.

Did I feel relief?

No.

Jamie was out again. My wounds had healed and the stitches off, so I sat on the edge of a bathtub with a razor.

My heart heavy and my breathing nearly stopping with every passing second.

“You're the last from my family, Alexander, everyone else died...” She wanted me to reproduce. She wanted me to continue the heritage. She had told me this when I was with Alexa, when I thought I would. When I had ring shopping in mind and I was certain that I would be a father. I looked at the razor.

I would be ending the tree.

Dad continued his.

Mom didn't.

I looked down, the razor shining under the light and I stared at it. I dropped it and went to the mirror. I saw no traces of mom in me, mostly dad. It's as if she had died within me as well, withered all the resemblance to take to the grave. Maybe she had cut down the tree herself, not even me.

I traced the mirror with my fingertips, then my face and my growing subtle stubble. My hair had grown rather long and I looked up, once the lights started flickering. I felt a warm presence besides me for a while and I tilted my head, but it passed soon. I tried to cry, but it never came, just a loud sob and I left the bathroom, waiting for Jamie to come back from work.

I remember the first time I had sucked Jamie off I had the taste of cum in my throat and Alexa didn't find it suspicious even if I could feel it after brushing teeth twice, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.

He stayed with me and I would get used to the taste with the years to come.

I traced the scars on my hands, sitting on the bed and then I just threw myself backwards, staring at the ceiling, not finding any cracks and my vision going white, as if I had all my wounds open and I fell asleep, feeling the blood seep out of me, arms in a cross stand and blood going from every wound, painting the bed covers like sins, giving me forgotten wings and then I felt my body rise, just to look at me from the ceiling to the bed. My head was tilted to the side and two men were holding my hands, which were in tight fists, they tried to open. Jamie. Miles. And Alexa in the doorway, telling me that I was on the ceiling.

I wake up to my phone ringing.

Alexa's condolences. Far too late. She had been postponing them. I take them briefly and excuse myself before she asks why didn't I attend the funeral. I take the razor from the bathroom, slowly walking to the bed, my hands shaking and I trace a wound, a second, a third, not cutting, just leaving a faint white line on it and I stay still before I dig into the flesh. Closing my eyes.

She had cut the tree down.

I started slashing with force... Left arm, right arm, even neck this time, eyes stinging from the pain. I took off my shirt and pants. Attacking the thighs and chest, breathing heavily. I wanted it all out. I laid on the bed, when I was satisfied, but I couldn't stop, I just felt tired and my vision was getting foggy from all the blood, all the shock. She had died. I started opening older wounds... Ones which I hadn't done since I was a teenager, my screams reaching my throat and I didn't know how much more did I need. I traced my stomach, silently prayed...

To go.

And stabbed myself.

I scream.

Twisting and turning in the mess of a bed, which I made love in so so many times, never telling much, because it's a sin to many. I saw all the blood, all the traces and all the bleeding from many parts of my body. I didn't know how I was still conscious. The razor besides me, hands no longer taking it in, but pouring it all out.

I am not my parent's child.

I am no one.

I'm not free either.

I close my eyes, unable to clutch the razor. I am like an angel of death and I grin when Jamie walks in, talking about something else before he sees my blood and grabs the phone. But my vision goes white when he calls, when they carry me, when I get stitched again. My vision remains white with peppered memories of questions of why had I done it and if it was a suicide attempt.

“I just want the blood out... She's dead...”

Jamie looked at me confused, but not as confused as the nurse.

“She cut down the tree... Because her son is gay...”

I barely ever uttered the word gay out loud.

Was I sitting? Was I in a bed? Was I at the pearly gates?

“I want all the blood gone... She had given... I had produced...”

“Alexander.”

“That's how she called me.”

“You needed a blood transfusion... But you'd make your own blood again.”

I looked at the nurse. My vision white and foggy.

“Because family never dies until the last one does.”

I twisted the knife so hard in my stomach that it still aches. Because death is even worse.

I put my hands on the table. Jamie looking at me concerned in my peripheral vision.

“So let me die.”

“So you wanted to die, Alexander? I'll label it as a suicide attempt.” I sat back down and looked at Jamie who started saying that it was just self-harm going out of control, but I just watched him, my head fuzzy and then I put my hand on his cheek.

Jamie took my hand in his and kept talking.

Was I hallucinating?

Why was the knife still twisting?

Why could I feel blood travelling up to my mouth and how come I coughed it out when Jamie told me it was going to be okay, back in the bedroom?

“James, we will have to keep him under observation... Suicide attempts are a serious matter-”

“The wiring in my brain is wrong.” I say, thinking that's what's about to follow. I smile at her. She doesn't respond, keeps typing and I watch her.

“I don't want my family alerted.” I say quietly and sit back, I look at the ceiling. It has cracks. I put a hand to my stomach, where I had twisted the knife. Did I need an operation? I don't know.

“Your father won't be alerted then, but I highly reco-”

“The tree is cut down.” I say and don't speak more, until I am allowed to sleep and I do, feeling the knife twist further and through out the night I feel like I'm dying, Jamie's hand clutching mine tight, keeping me alive. I wake up with the sunrise and I ask him to open the curtains and that's when I feel myself drift. Mumbling something about cremation, thinking of funerals, graves and then Jamie clutches my hand again and I'm back. Doctors come and go, wounds don't heal fast and I'm guessing my blood is mine again...

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to express all the pain I was feeling at the time and do it through discussions in the story that interest me and whatnot. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> Thank you for all the support!


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